Tag Archives: spells

A few years ago, Vince and I began work on revising his fantastic Mazes & Perils rules set, which eventually became Mazes & Perils Deluxe. And it’s pretty awesome, but… like everything in life, can always be better. Since then, Vince has been toying with a simplified version of the rules. Though we all love those Old…

This week I have the distinct pleasure of starting a new campaign and among the players, I have two who have not ever played a tabletop role-playing game before. Not since I taught my girls how to play D&D have I had new players at my table, so I’m excited to see how they do.…

Apparently my last post struck a nerve with some folks. I had a great conversation on Facebook with a bunch of folks with comments like: “It’s a different world. The sooner you come to grips with that, the easier it’ll get for you.” (Rob) “But can be used to cause damage. Like to light a…

Way back when the world was flat and I was playing 1e AD&D in the mid 1980s, a book came out that threw a number of monkey wrenches into our nice, ordered existence… Unearthed Arcana. There were some cool things like Cavaliers and extended item lists. There were some weird things like the new stat…

The whole discussion about potions and other applications of magic, especially oils and poultices, got me thinking about the different ways that different magical theories might approach healing. Let’s look at three different disciplines today: Life Magic, Necromancy, and Divine Magic. (I’ll talk more about Life Magic and Necromancy in other posts down the line…)…

A couple of weeks ago I offered a look at the Runic Wizard – a possible new class for the OSR-themed Mazes & Perils game. Now I’d like to talk a bit about the Alchemist, which may be premature but I am going to give it a stab anyway. The Alchemist We all know those people…

Since my ideas about Runic Magic didn’t scare you off, it must be time to bring up another fascinating field of wizardry… Alchemy! Like runic magick, the ideas behind alchemy are closer to traditional spellcraft in that an alchemist casts spells designed to affect material things. The whole art of Alchemy revolves around the idea of almost…

Last week I brought up the idea of migrating the Runic Wizardry spells from the old (now defunct) Moebius Adventures RPG over to an OSR-approach with Mazes & Perils and the community did not disappoint with a few options to explore… David Welborn suggested I take a look at Swords & Spells, which is an…

Long ago and far away, there was the Moebius Adventures Roleplaying Game. This goes back even farther than the Moebius Adventures Core Rules book that came out in 2007 and launches us all the way back to the mid-1990s. This was the time of The Age of Phaedrus and a golden age for reinventing the wheel. Though little of…

Magic is such an intrinsic part of much of the fantasy genre that I decided to pull together a few thoughts on what it is that makes a spell a spell. Though most of what I’ve been writing is aimed at Mazes & Perils these days, I usually play 5e or 4e D&D with my main…